BLUEMOMENT

One of the reasons for an insurance survey is so that the insurers can be sure that the boat they insure is the same as the boat you are claiming. There are lots of cases of insurance fraud where boats have sunk under one ownership long after they have been sold on. There are endless ways that peopl...

These kinds of surveys depend on people answering the questions. All of your rants about governments and their likes are highly entertaining but are wasted effort because politicians don't read forums. The whole point of this is to make a strategy which is good for the people who live in coastal are...

Been through the Grey Dogs in kayak many times, Drascombe Lugger a few times and 50' ketch once. Also got airborne in a RIB. The currents are strong as you may have guessed and steering for the middle seemed to work. The North channel at the sound of Luing side is wider and straighter. Biggest scare...

A power driven vessel under 12m is allowed to display an all-round white light instead of separate masthead and stern lights. (RYA IRPCS book page 49)
What the real world calls a masthead light we yotties call a steaming light.

David Thomas's address is Patchworks, Newton Road, Warsash, Southampton. I don't have the post code.

Flares are a distress signal. Sending a distress signal when you are not in distress is a criminal offence. Regardless of how far from the sea you are. In Scotland that's never very far. Flare disposal is easy. Give them to the people you but new ones from. If they refuse then take your money to som...

The little bits of plastic we all (and I'm including the fish) eat don't seem so bad. It's the chemicals that leach out which are not so nice. They go into fish flesh and don't get flushed out so they accumulate. This is worse in fatty fish like salmon-just one of the many reasons I will never eat s...

All anodes are not created equal. MG Duff use Milspec zinc-no idea what else is in them. I tried to buy Aluminium anodes for a boat kept in brackish water (sea loch) all the chandlery bods looked at me like i was mental- some had clearly never heard of ally anodes. Ordered them from Anodes Direct on...

There seems to be loads of wild panic on this issue. The epicentre seems to be Studland Bay where an experiment to assess the impact of anchoring has been destroyed. This means we'll never know what impact anchoring has on sea grass. The danger now is that the precautionary principal is applied and ...